Urban bias in Indian planning has now become an accepted feature of all academic, and to some extent even policy, debates on rural development in that part of the world. This urban bias manifests itself in many ways and is found even in the ‘unconscious assumptions of the planners themselves’ (Lipton, 1968). B.H. Farmer in his work has analysed several instances of such assumed, and indeed real, urban bias in the macro-planning of rural development in India. It was at the end of this fieldwork for his project Green Revolution? (1977) that Farmer became convinced of the incomplete understanding of countryside in existing literature on Indian rural development. He noted in a paper presented to the Second Indo-British Geography Seminar that the urban-rural relationships in India are between towns and agriculturalists and not between towns and commuters/holiday-makers/ retired townspeople (Farmer, 1975). With a characteristic humility, Farmer described this statement as ‘so trite as to be unworthy of a paper intended for an intelligent and informed readership’. Yet what he had to say on this aspect is not insignificant. There are examples of studies on urban-rural relationships which completely lack the rural view; which demonstrate unwillingness to discuss rural attitudes and problems in anything but a rather ‘general and unrealistic way’ (Lipton, 1968); and which recommend imposition of urban (or western) ideas for the solution of Indian problems. Farmer strongly recommended that nothing short of a complete reversal of the current angle of view (which is urban based) is likely to rectify the situation (Farmer, 1975).